Sermon, 2/38/21. Stewardship and Evangelism: Two Side of the Same Coin?

2 Lent

Psalm 22:22–30; Genesis 17:1–7, 15–16; Romans 4:13–25; Mark 8:31-38

The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.  Romans 4:13

Stewardship and Evangelism!  On this Second Sunday in Lent, our most solemn penitential season, it may strike you as being odd—indeed, completely inconceivable—that I should comingle these two words in the English language.  Two words not separated by a comma, but connected by the conjunction A N D, which implies co-equality, or at least a claim to being related.  Moreover, is it not even more unexpected, disconcerting even, to hear the word “evangelism” in a homily addressed to an Episcopal congregation?  In the Episcopal Church, once a year regularly, we expect a sermon on stewardship, and so that term is not foreign to an Episcopalian.  But evangelism?  And then, in Lent?  Surely, Padre, you have mistaken your audience!

Moreover, during our annual meeting, we have conducted our every-member canvass, we have accepted our treasurer’s report and, we have passed our parish budget; and so, aside from honoring our pledges of time, energy, and financial resources, we can again tuck “stewardship” aside until early to mid-November 2021.  Especially is that so, with the lengthening of daylight hours and as a typical Northeast winter begins ever so very slowly to loosen its grip.  Also, encamped in our dwellings since Lent of 2020, we are more ready to think of July 2021 and its heat and humidity, than of November, December, January, February and the winter storms that characterize those months, than of every member canvasses and stewardship. 

However, it is precisely the importance of stewardship, managing something of great value that has been placed before us in today’s Lenten lectionary.  Stewardship and evangelism have been interwoven.  They are that common thread that runs through today’s Old Testament lesson from Genesis and the New Testament Letter to the Romans.    And both are directly connected to the call to be evangelist, a call expressed in the words of Jesus “If any man would come after me, let him…take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34b.)

At the 1988 Lambeth Conference, it was declared that the 1990s should be the Decade of Evangelism.  I smiled then and now even, again.  When Caesar Augustus declared that the whole world should be taxed, the whole world, i.e. that portion of the world that Rome controlled, saw activity.  People were on the move.  Joseph set out to return to Jerusalem, for he was of the House and Lineage of David.  Jesus made his appearance on the world stage.  Sages, fascinated by their stargazing, visited Herold the King.  In the vernacular, “stuff happened.”

And in the 1990s?  The response throughout much of our Communion, especially in the western world, was more like the old saw applied to the month of March “in like a lion, out like a lamb.”  To be sure, press conferences were held, proclamations were released, and brochures were printed and circulated.  But in the end, it was a sigh of disinterest or boredom that, as indicated, was heard in the western world.  Sighs of resignation to the decline in membership and influence could be heard, but the response was at best tepid.  If the Church is about Jesus, where was the excitement, the enthusiasm that accompanied his birth?

I cannot help but recall the bitingly truthful, psychological, and spiritual observation that Jesus of Nazareth made: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  (Matt. 6:21)  What was there to become excited about, for surely we could not proclaim “If any man would come after me, let him…take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34b.)  Not only was this call to service not sound-bite material (too long), it was also threatening, terrifying, for who want deliberately to go out seeking trouble?  Would we not be met with ridicule in the marketplace?  But that is what evangelism is all about. 

So is it not time 2021, moving into and beyond Covid-19, to revisit what the essence of faith in Jesus of Nazareth, i.e. Christianity, is all about and how we are to shepherd, i.e. steward, this message of Good News, so that those remaining in the fold, those who have followed our liturgies on Facebook and Zoom and other live-streaming media, as well as those outside, for whom Christianity is not a blimp on their radar or iPhone screen?  Are we preparing ourselves during Lent to be better able to declare to the world what God through Jesus is requiring of us? (Micah 6:8)  Have we given thought to a language that the people of 2021 could understand?  And must language be defined always as being verbal utterances?

The story of Abram who becomes Abraham is very familiar to us because, among other things, he comes within a swift downward thrust of the blade that he held in his hand of sacrificing his son, of committing an act that he believed would prove his willingness to acknowledge the supremacy of God, a show of his faith in God.  Abraham had become the steward of God’s covenant that would teach many nations of the righteous power and of the expansion of God’s concern for humankind. 

At the age of 90, which had surpassed the usual 3 score and 10 (indeed, now 4 score and 10), Abram, a.k.a. Abraham was tasked with preserving God’s covenant, which would be passed on to the next generation, to his son Jacob.  Abraham and later his son Jacob had a story to tell.  Abraham exercised his stewardship by faith.  Stewardship was not measured by shekels or gold bullions, but by his willingness to offer to God something even more precious, namely the only link, his son, that was to make Abraham the leader of many nations, something which Abraham himself would not experience.  And it was the tenacious faith of Abraham that reinforced Paul’s understanding of faith.  And it was Paul who pointed to that which was the logical extension or continuation of Abraham’s faith.  Paul directed then and now to the critical call of Jesus of Nazareth:

As I have most assuredly mentioned several times previously, living, as it were, under a constant “house arrest” because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I am less distracted by my own sense of “busyness,” of making sure that I was out “doing God’s work.”  Rather, I find that I have more time, actually, to think about “God’s WORD.”  “God’s word” for me is the Good News, and the question that today’s gospel seems to cause me to reconsider is: How have I married my stewardship with evangelism, and what is, moreover, that evangelism?

Being under “house arrest” has afforded me time to reconsider the nature of the call of the Man from Nazareth ‘to take up his cross.’  Often, we have thought of the cross as something that a person bears as a burden, inflicted by nature or circumstance.  Circumstances of a physical handicap or an unanticipated economic hardship are heavy burdens and should call forth our compassion and empathy.  Nature is nature, life is life, and one contends with those adversities.  But, should we look closely at the actions and pronouncements of Jesus of Nazareth, we quickly recognize that they are not the cross that _Jesus invites us_ to take up. 

Perhaps, going forward, it might behoove us to think of ‘taking up his cross’ differently, one that causes, if not verbal enthusiasm, then surely a dedication of spirit that empowers in 2021 a new evangelism.  As I understand this call, the cross mentioned by Jesus is something that demands serious contemplation, because such an action is serious, but it is taken up willingly.  That is to say, _the cross of which Jesus speaks is something that we decide voluntarily to do._  It is not something inflicted upon us without our consent, nor is it some unfortunate difficulty that befalls us because of events outside our control or because of our own carelessness or lack of preparation.  Life is full of burdens that we have to bear because we cannot escape them.  But they are not the cross that Jesus offers us.  The cross, mentioned by Jesus, is something that can be avoided or evaded or ignored. 

In responding voluntarily to the call to take up Jesus’ cross, to respond to the call to be imitators of Jesus of Nazareth, we do so in the service of others, not so that people will pity us, or praise us for our endurance.  Likewise, _we do not engage in some act of penance_, hoping for personal spiritual growth.  The cross, which we take up may produce dislocation, alienation and in which we suffer the loss of old relationships, we take onto ourselves for the benefit of others, even as Jesus went eventually to Calvary on behalf of the world.  The torturous prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is not about himself.  If he be one of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, Jesus has the power to forego crucifixion, but he will accept it in order to fulfill God’s intention: “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me: yet not what I want, but what you want.” (Mtt. 26:39).

God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, teaches us a new stewardship.  God is not expedient.  For how many generations, how many centuries, did God wait for humankind to clean up its act and sort itself out, before taking the decisive action and extreme measure of sending Jesus Christ?  God endured rebellion in paradise, the endless complaints during deliverance from slavery, the adoration of vain idols, the stoning of the prophets, the apostasy of the kings.  God refrained from the easiest solution—wiping out the whole lot of us—only because God had promised not to resort to such expedience.  We recall from our reading last week, that God planted his rainbow in the sky as a vivid display of his long-suffering being, of his love for that which he had created.

In the gospel appointed for today, Jesus speaks of a new and different stewardship.  He is at the height of his popularity.  He has fed thousands with scant baskets of food.  Miraculously, he has given sight to the blind, raised the dead, and healed the sick.  Had he wished, he could have booted out the scribes and priests who later took his life, and he could have ruled the temple as his own.  However, this action would have had a more limited scope.

What Jesus did do, however, was to offer a new kind of stewardship, and it was not the most expedient thing for him to have done.  + + He suggests not giving up something, but taking on something that may even have an unpleasant or unhappy outcome.  He suggests a faithfulness that has an eye for worlds to come, worlds not yet glimpsed by human imagination. + +

On two separate occasions I have visited the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome, once prior to its restoration, and again afterwards.  Even before the vibrant colors were restored, the work was awe-inspiring for its sheer magnitude and for, in my limited imagination, the effort and energy Michelangelo must have expended in order to produce such a magnificent work. 

However, it is awe-inspiring for another reason.  On the ceiling of the chapel, right in the center, is that famous depiction of the hand of God reaching for the hand of Adam.  It is the artist’s dramatic attempt to capture the essence of creation.  It also reveals God the Redeemer.  There is God, depicted as bigger than life, in power and in love, reaching out to humanity.  God’s hand seeks to touch, to create, to transform, and to redeem.  Michelangelo has captured in that famous printing, as he has throughout the ceiling and wall of the Sistine Chapel, some of the very essence of what our Book of Records has to tell us about God.  The God of our Book of Records is one who reaches out to us again and again. 

The stewardship of Jesus—freely given, not to win favor with God or with humankind, but to extend God’s creative hand to us—once again loomed out at me this week from the text of the gospel.  In his own Lent, Jesus was not giving up, but taking on something. I offer this notion of stewardship for your reflection as a possible Lenten discipline, which will be required in our post-Covid conversations and actions.  May our Lenten introspections fertilize our commitment to our Stewardship of the Evangelion, the Good News of God’s unrelenting love for all humankind.  Amen.